'It did not feel real,' the wife of the WNBA All-Star says.
Cherelle Griner is beyond glad to have her wife home. In a new interview, Cherelle reveals what she was thinking when she was reunited with Brittney Griner after the WNBA All-Star's 10 month-long detention in Russia.
Earlier this month, Cherelle got the news she'd long-awaited -- President Joe Biden had made a deal to get Brittney home.
"I had thought about that moment a thousand times, and I thought I would be full of tears, but I was overwhelmingly happy," Cherelle recalls in an interview with People. "It was the first time I was able to finally exhale, and I'm like, 'Oh, thank God. This is such a great day.'"
Shortly thereafter, Cherelle and Brittney spotted each other through an airplane window.
"We were both just instantly crying," Cherelle remembers. "I was standing there full of tears and someone ran over and handed me a handkerchief. I definitely needed it."
Cherelle couldn't get face-to-face with Brittney for a while, though, as medical professionals had to evaluate the pro athlete first. "Those seconds," Cherelle said, "couldn't go by fast enough."
Finally, Cherelle and Brittney were reunited at last. "I couldn't stop touching her face," Cherelle says. "I was like, 'Is this really you?' It did not feel real. It was chilling -- and warm. I was just holding on tight. I couldn't let her go."
Brittney's ordeal started in February, when Sheremetyevo International Airport authorities allegedly found four vape cartridges containing hash oil, a concentrated form of cannabis that is illegal in Russia, in her luggage. She was later sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison.
"It was almost as if somebody just punched you in the stomach and you inhaled," Cherelle tells the outlet of how she felt after Brittney's sentencing. "
Cherelle "was hopeless a lot of days" while Brittney was away, but she never stopped fighting for her wife's freedom.
"You try and stay grounded, but I'm human. Still, I would never completely give up hope on my wife's life," Cherelle says, before revealing that she rarely slept through the night while Brittney was in Russia.
"I had all my freedom. I had my bed. But when you have your family overseas in a situation like that, time zones play a factor," she says. "Every night, that's the only time I could talk to her attorneys and I could handle things, anything related to Russia. And so I just hadn't slept."
Now that they are back together, they often have too much to catch up on to sleep.
"The first night, we didn't sleep at all," Cherelle says. "We just talked all night long and all morning. And it was so good to be able to do it without three weeks in between the conversation, because for 10 months we were passing letters. It was great to have that dialogue back and forth."
While both Cherelle and Brittney are all too aware of what they've been through, they're "mindful of the fact you can't go backwards."
"It's unfortunate that those 10 months happened without us being able to be side-by-side. But it happened, and we're embracing the fact that we now get to learn each other's story through that time," Cherelle says. "So we're taking it slow. We are not doing it all at once. But we are honoring the fact that I went through something that was really hard and difficult without BG's awareness, and vice versa. Day by day, we're just feeding a little bit to the soul and understanding each other's journey so we can actually start walking together."
Cherelle says that, on one hand, she's "doing amazing" because her "family's whole, I have my person, and so I feel the most supported and safe and secure as I've ever felt in life."
"But it's very overwhelming," she admits. "We're plus-13 days in from BG being away for almost 10 months. So it's a new journey for us. And so we're definitely trying to figure out how we blend back as one."
They are trying to get back to some sense of normalcy, though, embracing their Christmas traditions such as watching holiday movies, making hot chocolate and going ahead with their annual chocolate chip and white macadamia nut cookie-baking contest.
"We do understand that the normal we are referring to was what we were doing before February 17. We reminisce about certain things in the past," Cherelle says. "Still, we're trying to make sure we're not going backwards. For the most part, we're eyes focused on what's in store next for the both of us."
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